Getting your DUCs in a row - standardising the representation of Digital Use Conditions

Authors	JEANSON Francis GIBSON Spencer J ALPER Pinar BERNIER Alexander WOOLLEY J Patrick MIETCHEN Daniel STRUG Andrzej BECKER Regina KAMERLING Pim GONZALEZ Maria del Carmen Sanchez MAH Nancy NOVAKOWSKI Ann WILKINSON Mark D BENHAMED Oussama Mohammed LANDI Annalisa KROG Georg Philip MÜLLER Heimo RIAZ Umar VEAL Colin HOLUB Petr VAN ENCKEVORT Esther BROOKES Anthony J
Year of publication	2024
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	SCIENTIFIC DATA
MU Faculty or unit	Institute of Computer Science
Citation
web	https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-024-03280-6
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03280-6
Description	Improving patient care and advancing scientific discovery requires responsible sharing of research data, healthcare records, biosamples, and biomedical resources that must also respect applicable use conditions. Defining a standard to structure and manage these use conditions is a complex and challenging task. This is exemplified by a near unlimited range of asset types, a high variability of applicable conditions, and differing applications at the individual or collective level. Furthermore, the specifics and granularity required are likely to vary depending on the ultimate contexts of use. All these factors confound alignment of institutional missions, funding objectives, regulatory and technical requirements to facilitate effective sharing. The presented work highlights the complexity and diversity of the problem, reviews the current state of the art, and emphasises the need for a flexible and adaptable approach. We propose Digital Use Conditions (DUC) as a framework that addresses these needs by leveraging existing standards, striking a balance between expressiveness versus ambiguity, and considering the breadth of applicable information with their context of use.